Coal news and updates

Coal stocks at India’s power plants nearly at 38 mt

Coal stocks at about 100 thermal power plants (TPS) monitored by the Central Electricity Authority (CEA) nearly touched 38 million tons (mt) as of March 15, 2016, consequently, going up week-on-week (w-o-w), month-on-month (m-o-m) and year-on-year (y-o-y).

According to a CEA report, coal stocks at 100 TPS stood at 37.918 mt as of March 15, 2016, up 2.13% w-o-w from 37.087 mt as of March 8, 2016 and up 5.37% m-o-m from 35.986 mt as of February 15, 2016.

The inventory as on March 15, 2016 was up 60.81% y-o-y from 23.580 mt as of March 15, 2015.

There has been a continuous improvement in the coal stocks positions at power plants since the beginning of January 2015 and the situation is such that since December 2015, not a single plant has been facing a super-critical coal stocks scenario of less than 7 days or critical coal stocks position of less than 4 days.

Of the total, domestic coal stocks at the TPS stood at 35.400 mt as of March 15, 2016, up 2.84% w-o-w from 34.422 mt as of March 8, 2016, up 5.57% m-o-m from 33.532 mt as of February 15, 2016 and up 70.39% y-o-y from 20.776 mt as of March 15, 2015.

However, imported coal stocks at the TPS stood at 2.518 mt as of March 15, 2016, down 6.95% w-o-w from 2.706 mt as of March 8, 2016 but up 2.61% m-o-m from 2.454 mt as of February 15, 2016. However, these were down 10.20% y-o-y from 2.804 mt as of March 15, 2015.

A year back, as of March 15, 2015, the number of plants facing critical coal stocks position of less than seven days was 10 and the number of plants facing critical coal stocks position of less than four days was 1.

In terms of days, stocks of coal on March 15, 2016, March 8, 2016, February 15, 2016 and on March 15, 2015 were sufficient to run all the plants for 27, 26, 24 and 16 days respectively.

Following table shows coal stocks position at power plants on various days: